Sentence boosted for 'predatory' targeting of churches

Targeting churches to steal for money to buy drugs was ruled predatory conduct before a four- to 15-year prison term was handed down to a Westland man Thursday in Lenawee County Circuit Court.

Jonathan Edward-Donald Morris, 25, was identified as a leader among a group of three men charged with burglarizing Crosspointe Church on M-50 in Cambridge Township on Oct. 7. A member of the group admitted they broke into eight other churches in Jackson and Washtenaw counties to pay for their drug habits.

“I know what I did was wrong,” Morris said at his sentencing hearing. He was on parole from a 2008 burglary conviction when he started using drugs again last year, he told Judge Timothy P. Pickard.

“Things got hectic. I went back to what I know,” Morris said.

Public defender John Glaser asked that Morris be sentenced within state guidelines for the breaking-and-entering charge he pleaded guilty to on Nov. 20.

“If you look at his history, he does have a terrible problem with drugs,” said Glaser. “He wants the court to know that whatever you do here, he does intend to change his life around.”

Guideline scoring was changed after Pickard ruled the church burglaries Morris carried out were predatory conduct that took advantage of vulnerable victims. The guideline change raised the minimum prison term from 28 months to 47 months.

Another member of the group has stated Morris led them to churches exclusively, testified Gary Ward, a Lenawee County Sheriff’s Department detective.

“They always picked the churches because they were easy targets,” Ward said. The burglaries were committed on Sunday and Wednesday nights, he said, because there was a greater chance of finding cash from collections taken during services on those days, he said.

They also found churches were easy to break into, Ward testified. Sometimes they were able to walk through unlocked doors, he said.

Pickard ruled that targeting churches for burglary was predatory and identified other grounds to justify a longer prison term.

“When you rob churches there are many, many, many victims,” Pickard said. The guidelines account for only four offenses rather than all the burglaries he committed. And Morris is a repeat offender, he said, reading a list of prior burglary convictions including a 2008 conviction he was on parole for at the time of last year’s break-ins.

Pickard told Morris he cannot understand why someone who comes from a good family that has supported him would choose a life of drug abuse and crime.

“There isn’t any excuse for you doing all this stuff, in my book,” Pickard told him.

Morris is to begin the prison term after he completes his sentence from the 2008 conviction.

A hearing for another defendant in the case was adjourned Wednesday in circuit court. Aaron Ray Hanson, 27, is to return Feb. 19.

The third member of the group, Joseph Carl Hodges, 21, of Clarklake, pleaded guilty to larceny on Nov. 6 and cooperated with police investigating the church burglaries in three counties. He was sentenced Dec. 12 by Judge Margaret M.S. Noe to six months’ jail and probation under the Holmes Youthful Trainee Act.